Kansas:

1935



The old bus bumped and bounced as it rolled onto the shoulder of the road, jostling me awake.  I glanced out the window in a daze, lost somewhere between sleep and dream, but I saw at once that nothing had changed.  The land, clogged with snow stretched out to the horizon, flat and unbroken save for the occasional grain silo or rotting windmill.  Even the far off horizon was barely visible; disappearing into the leaden gray sky that hung low, thick and threatening.

“Your stop, son.”

I knuckled the sleep from my eyes and stood on shaky legs, stepping into the cramped aisle running through the center of the old Gray Hound.  The old man in the opposite seat gave me a dirty look, shifting the bulge in his mouth from one cheek to the other.  I smiled my apologies as I gathered my duffel bag, knowing he would have spit on me had he thought he might get away with it.  I wondered what was so important in his life that he could not wait five minutes for me to get off the bus.

The other passengers seemed to ignore me as I limped towards the front of the bus.  A little girl stared at me for a heartbeat, then returned to brushing down the hair of her doll.  A plain looking woman in a drab woolen jacket hugged her bags closer to her as I passed, wrinkling her nose.  I smelled, I knew, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

The driver opened the doors with a crank of the handle near his seat and pointed out into the waste as I stood on the steps-

“Taylor farm’s about five miles down the road there.  Can’t miss it if’n ya stay on the road.”

I nodded my thanks and stepped off of the bus, favoring my numb and throbbing leg as I stood on the slushy shoulder of the slick gravel road.  I stared out at the land, so vast and barren, wondering why anyone would choose to live their life here.  A shiver ran up my spine, but not from the cold.

“You sure you wanna get off here, son?  Next bus don’t come by near nine- ten tonight.  Long time t’wait.”

The driver stared down thoughtfully at me from his seat, and I foolishly looked up and met his gaze.  Too late, there was nothing I could do but shrug and smile, and wish that he would just shut the doors and drive on-

“I’ll be fine.  Thanks.” I lied.  “The Taylors are expecting me.”

It was the driver’s turn to shrug and smile.  He wished me luck and shut the door.  I heard the gears grind as the bus shuddered and rumbled away, blowing a thick plume of gray smoke that dispersed on the chilly breeze.  I watched as the bus dwindled in the distance, heading for that murky line where the land met the sky, then turned and shouldered my bag.

There was a signpost marking my location; the wide spot in the road where Route Five met Fire Route Number Nine.  I assumed that the depression in the snow heading towards the horizon was the road that I was supposed to take and shuffled off in that general direction, leaving a hiss of steam in my wake.


No one had traveled the road since the last snowfall.  The snow was deep and frozen, and every step was an effort as the pain in my right leg shifted to the left depending on whether I was stepping up or down.  There was little to look at; a grain silo far off to the west and a gray ramshackle barn behind that, a small house, little more than a dot on the fringe of my sight.  I stood resting for almost ten minutes as a truck rumbled along in the distance, watching.  Before long, however, the steam was billowing about me and I had to move on.

Having little to occupy my mind over the trek, my thoughts drifted back to the dream that had brought me here.  In my mind’s eye I saw again the lonely signpost standing on the empty road.  I learned some time before to look for things in my dreams to direct me, and one night, when the dream came again, I focused on the signs, memorizing the words.  I saw the farmhouse, standing alone against the stark landscape, weathered and defeated by the land and elements.  It had been a good place once, a farm full of love and hope, but like the rest of the world was now forgotten.  A blight on the land.  In the house, I pictured the woman, sitting at the table, her accusing, wide eyes burning into my soul.  I had seen her every night for the past week, and knew that she was what I was supposed to find here.  She was the key, somehow, and when I found her I would be free of the dreams- at least for a time.


The thick gray clouds were swollen and bloated when I finally turned down the drive that led to the Taylor farm.  There was a fence, battered and drab like the rest of the land, and I would have missed the drive totally had the fence not broken there, a space to let cars in and out.  I could see the farmhouse in the distance, but not so far away now.  It was a sprawling place spreading out rather than up.  There was a porch, two old rocking chairs wobbling in the biting wind.  There was an oak, dead and barren, its limbs scratching at the side of the house.  I thought that perhaps I was too late again, until I saw the child playing in the fields.  He was building a snowman, oblivious of the horror that was about to erupt and devastate his world as he rolled a mound of snow across the ground.

The child reminded me of Jonathan again.  Jonathan: my brother.  He was the focus of my first dream.  The first dream that mattered, anyway.  We were at a fair.  I could see the whole family; Mama and Papa, Jonathan, Missy and Susan.  We were having fun, playing the penny games in the Midway, and eating hot popped corn and cotton candy.  We were watching a fire-eater when Johnny wandered off on his own, following a stray dog.  I found him in the mist in the shadows of the dream.  The big dog with the yellow eyes had him cornered back in the tents, bearing its teeth in a snarl that meant it was going to attack.  Johnny was petrified as I ran forward and the dog pounced.  I burned it, how I did not know, and sent it whining back into the shadows.

I had saved Johnny, and I was a hero for a minute.  Then I told the family about the dream and what I had done.  I told them about the fire.  Mama said it was a blessing, that I was gifted and a wonder.  Papa said it was a curse, right before he broke my leg and threw me out of the house.

I wandered the destitute streets of the city for a time, lost, crippled and alone.  I moved from flop to flop as I searched for my next meal, never staying in one place for too long.  I could not go home.  Papa said he would kill me if he saw me again.  Life was hard for a boy, not yet a man, but I survived.

I did not understand the next dream.  I did not know what I was supposed to do.  It haunted me, night after night for almost a month; a church burning in the darkness, a preacher impaled on a wrought iron fence.  Then it went away.  The next dream showed a little girl drowning in an icy lake, the darkness dragging her down.  Then I saw the Empire State Building, and a woman falling from its heights.  I made my way to New York, where I met a woman who was lost in her own dreams, talking to people who were no longer there.  I watched her jump.

My true powers had manifested not long after, and I finally knew why my dreams were haunted so.  The dreams were what had to happen.  They showed me the evil in the world, and it was my job, my duty to put things right.  Mama had called it a blessing, and God in his infinite wisdom had given me the ability to do his bidding.  I was the ‘Hand of God’, dispensing his righteous wrath, his cleansing fire upon the corrupt and unforgiven.

Billows of steam were rising about me as I stood in the knee-deep snow watching the boy at play.  I was not cold; I never get cold, but the wind was biting and sleet was cutting at the exposed skin of my face.  My clothes were starting to smolder again.  I trudged on towards the house.

I knocked of course, as Mama had brought me up right, but after several minutes left alone on the porch I shouldered the door and forced it open.  It was not locked, but there was a pile of moldy clothes wedging it closed and holding it fast.

The front room was a mess.  There were clothes strewn everywhere; piled about the floor and draped over the furniture.  There were crusty plates moldering on a small walnut coffee table set before a long couch.  The fireplace was empty and cold save for a pile of ashes long dead.  A radio blared static in the background.

The house smelled of death and decay.  I felt my gorge rising into my throat, a bit of bread and cheese I had had the day before.  Soup searing my throat.  I could not be too late, I thought as I held my stomach in check.  The family was destitute, obviously.  We all were.  But the boy was playing in the fields, building snowmen and making angels.

I dropped my bag and staggered into the kitchen, smoke rising from my clothes.  The room was a mess.  The sink was piled high with dishes thick with crust and muck.  Plates and glasses lay shattered on the hard wood floor.  Something red and gray was splattered across the black of the stove, dried and awful.

The woman from my dreams sat at the kitchen table, her back to me.  I recognized the floral print of her dress, and the way her pale hair fell to one side.  I stepped up behind her, still fighting to hold the bile down.  I reached out to place my hand on her shoulder-

“She didn’t wanna play with me no more!”

I spun about, swirling the cloud of smoke that had gathered about me as I inched my way into the room.  It was the little boy, of course.  He must have seen me enter the house and come running to investigate.  He was standing in the frame of the back door,  wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt, a tattered pair of woolen gloves and mismatched boots.  Snot was running from his red nose, and he wiped it away on the back of his sleeve even as I started to stare.  His dirty brown hair had not seen a comb in some time, all matted down and greasy and poking out at odd angles.  He was filthy, and his big dark eyes stared at me curiously, as though I was some new toy he had yet to figure out.

“What?” I asked, sloughing off my overcoat and letting it fall to the floor at my feet.  I was burning up.  The boy pushed past me without a word, walking up to the kitchen counter and peering into a big wooden bucket.  He grabbed a dirty metal mug from the sink and dipped out a cup full of brackish water, which he quickly gulped down.  I glanced at the girl in the chair.  She had not moved.

“Mabel.  She didn’t wanna play with me no more.  She yelled at me.”

I looked at the girl again.  She had not moved, and I saw the red puddle gathering beneath her chair.  Ripples flowed out to the edges as a drop of blood fell from her dangling fingers.

“Will you play with me, mister?”

I staggered back as the room began to swell and swim.  I heard a clattering noise, and the few remaining plates and glasses in a nearby cabinet began to dance and fall, shattering on the floor.  A knife sank into the wall behind me, just inches from my throat.  Sweat was poring from my body as I slammed back into the wall myself, panic clutching at my heart.

The boy’s eyes were crackling with the darkling energy that I had come to know so well.  He was staring at me, inching forward with a lopsided grin on his skeletal face.  Veins were pulsing at his temples, throbbing and swelling with every beat of his heart.  Dishes started to fly from the sink as he passed, and the kitchen table skittered across the floor and slammed into the chair holding the girl.  It spun about, but miraculously she did not fall.  Her head lolled, and I saw the image from my dream, her wide bulging eyes locked on mine, her swollen tongue poking from the corner of her mouth, bloated and black.

I was too late-

The boy was the cause, what had drawn me here.  As I stared at the girl, the raw and gaping hole in the side of her head still dripping, I knew that he had killed her.  His mother and father were probably dead in another room, rotting away while he made angels in the snow.  Did he care?  Did he even know?

I don’t know-

As the panic rose within me, I felt the familiar tingle of my special blessing rising as well.  My skin was sizzling, my sweat evaporating as quickly as it appeared.  My leather boots were smoldering, my breeches charring and blackening with every step I took toward the boy.  I could see my breath in puffs of smoke and steam.

“Sure, buddy,” I said as something heavy slammed into my back.  My shirt burst into flames.  “I’ll play with you.”

I grabbed him and hugged him close, holding him tight.  The Taylor boy started screaming and kicking almost immediately.  He felt the heat radiating from my body, and it burned him.  He was not normal.  Not human, and the Light of the Almighty was burning him.  He beat his tiny fists against my arms as I held his face to my chest.  I could feel his hair spark and crackle under my fingers.  He was one of the dark ones; spawn of Satan, a demon possessing a pure and innocent little boy’s body.

I was the fire and the light; the Wrath of God.  It was my duty to follow the path of the dreams and set things right.  My destiny!

I held the boy close until he stopped struggling, but by then it was too late.  Fire danced across my skin, licking at me but never biting.  I stared at the girl sitting alone and her head rolled to the side again.  I smiled-

“Burn…”

I stayed until the final wall fell.  When the fire started to wane I could see bits of metal and stone in the burning debris, the tall chimney standing guard over all.  A fitting memorial, I thought; a hollow façade, cold and barren like the land.

After the boy had stopped struggling and the fire raged, I found the parents room.  They were on the bed, embracing but long dead.  I lit them, then left.  I am ashamed to say that I stole some of the father’s clothes, as my own bag had burned in the blaze.  I would recover what I could; my money folded within a metal cigarette case, my pocket-knife that my father gave me on my tenth birthday, my Shadow Secret Decoder Ring.  Treasures from a time long gone.

I had to leave, so I did.  Night was falling, and I knew that before long the bus would return and see the fire burning over the horizon.  The driver would remember me.  He would remember letting a strange boy with a bum leg off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.  He would remember my face, and see the fire, and I would be blamed.

Like Boston…
And New Orleans…

Like the big dog with the yellow eyes.

I had to go, so I did.  I would have to change my name too, I thought.  As I had before.  So as I limped along through the knee-deep snow with nothing to look at and no real destination in mind, I thought of names.  I would have time, time before the next dream, and the next mission.  Time to sleep and dream before I was called away again.  Time to decide who I might be.

I remembered my mother as the silver, clouded orb of the sun dipped beneath the horizon, and I smiled.  It had been almost two years since I had used her name.  Her maiden name-

Woodward.

A good name…

End

Story © Curt F